The Avatar
by Anonde
Summary: [On Hiatus] Older Aang Centric Dark AU. Aang is a teenager when he and Appa went into hibernation. Katara and Sokka are Southern Water Tribe Royalty and betrothed to Prince Zuko and Princess Yue respectively.
1. Chapter 1

Summary: Older Aang-centric Dark AU. What if the tyrant Chin the Great hadn't fallen off that cliff? What if his armies invaded the whole of the Earth Kingdom and turned its people against the Avatar? In this AU, the Earth Kingdom holds in thrall the other three nations as its vassal states.

Chapter One: Avatars Kyoshi, Roku and Aang

"Avatar Kyoshi, please don't ask me to do this." Tears began to fill the warrior's eyes when Kyoshi placed a sheathed sword in her trembling hands.

The warrior, young enough to be Kyoshi's daughter, stilled and held back her tears with determination as Kyoshi calmly reminded her that her hands have to be steady when she administered the killing blow.

"I would prefer it highly that you do it right the very first time," said Kyoshi with her voice sounding rather dry.

After several long and tense moments, the warrior swallowed hard before nodding once. "I will not fail you, Avatar Kyoshi."

Her tone this time gentle, Kyoshi told her chosen executioner that she didn't expect her to fail.

---

Roku could barely recall how it felt to have the sun shine down upon him. The flickering light of a firebended flame simply was a very poor substitute.

As always he had only the four stone walls of his cell to look upon. How long they had kept him locked up could probably be counted in years though oftentimes it felt as though it had only been yesterday when they had thrown him still as a child into this cell. He had long since lost track of time and because he never needed to eat or drink, he didn't even have mealtimes to count.

His captors had informed him that the Avatar, which was he, needed neither food nor water to sustain himself. Sleep was all that was required. Yet Roku was always hungry, always thirsty and always yearning to see the sun.

---

Aang, I want you to promise me something.

What is it, Monk Gyatso?

Look at these drawings.

... Toys?

Correct. I want you to remember how they look like.

... Why?

So that you'll recognize them, and when you do see toys like these - do not ever touch them, hold them or play with them. They are very dangerous.

---

Monk Gyatso?

Yes, Aang?

Why was Luri taken away?

... What do you mean, Aang?

Luri, one of my friends - he was taken away.

... When did this happen?

... Just a short while ago- ... Monk Gyatso, where are we going?

Shh, keep quiet. I'll tell you later, but for now - just follow me.

---

We're never going back, aren't we?

Hmm...?

We've been on this island for four years.

What? Already tiring of my company, Aang?

Don't smile. This is not funny. ... Maybe they've stopped looking for me.

They'll never stop looking for you, Aang.

... I didn't do anything to them.

I know, Aang, but they will lock you up if they ever find you as they did your predecessor, Avatar Roku.

... Am I gonna be stuck on this island with just you for the rest of my life?

---

Gyatso, hold on! I'll take you to a healer!

... Aang-

Don't talk! Appa, fly faster!

... Aang, no. Turn back. There's a storm.

I have to get you to the Southern Water Tribe! I don't care if they lock me up; I'm not going to let you die!

... Aang, I'm sorry.

Gyatso, no! Don't leave me!

---

End Chapter One


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: The Boy in the Iceberg

---

Princess Katara let out another sigh and again bothered her older brother, Prince Sokka.

"Do you mind?" said Sokka in a soft growl, keeping his eyes on his fishing sinker, ever alert if it should begin to bob up and down in the water to indicate that a fish had taken the bait.

His sister narrowed her eyes at his back and Sokka winced involuntarily when Katara loudly complained, "I thought you wanted me to go with you on your fishing trip so that you could advise me about Prince Zuko.

"Shh! Keep your voice down! You'll scare away the fish!"

"The fish can wait. You have to help me with my betrothal."

"I will. After I catch one fish."

"We've already been out here for an hour and you still haven't caught one."

"That's because you're noisy. We're fishing, not hunting for walrus-leviathans."

"Don't you go blaming me for your incompetence."

"Just keep quiet. Fishing first. Your fire prince problem later."

Making a soft growl of her own, Katara placed her hands on the boat's side for support before leaning over to peer at the water's surface. Not too long after, a respectable-sized fish in a waterbended bubble of water smacked and splashed respectively against the back of Sokka's head.

"There's your fish. Now, we talk."

"No fair using waterbending to fish-"

"You know very well that I wasn't competing with you in fishing. Sokka, be serious. I'm really worried about this betrothal."

It was Sokka's turn to sigh out loud. "All right all right. Sheesh. Relax, won't you? It's not as if you're the only one who's betrothed-"

"You can't compare Princess Yue to Zuko; Yue's nice. I know her; I don't know a thing about Prince Zuko."

Sokka didn't reply but instead held out his hand to Katara, indicating that she give him some time. Katara almost let out an outraged scream when he began shaking himself dry, spraying seawater droplets all over the boat, including on his sister.

"Sokka!"

"Hey, be fair. You're the one who got me wet."

A while later, when both royals were dry and the fishing tackle and fish carefully stowed away, Sokka, his face now quite serious, looked upon his younger sister with some concern for indeed Katara still appeared worried about being betrothed to the FireLord's heir despite her brother's considerable attempts to distract her by being annoying.

"You do know that mom and dad wouldn't had agreed to this arranged marriage if they thought you would be unhappy with Zuko, right?"

Some relief came over Katara's face. "... Yes, I do know that, Sokka."

And he then added, "Plus, there's still more than two years to go before you have to marry him while I have to marry Yue within this year. Two year's plenty of time to get to know someone, even if he's in another country, and I hear those Fire Nation messenger hawks are pretty speedy in delivering love letters."

Katara made a face at him. "Haha. Very funny, Sokka," she said sarcastically, but there was now an amused light in her blue eyes which told Sokka that he had succeeded at least somewhat in cheering up his younger sister. Now, if only he truly felt as confident about his impending marriage and Katara's still-a-way-off marriage as he pretended to be.

Suddenly, without warning, their boat picked up considerable speed. Sokka barely had time to realize that they were caught in a fast-moving surface current when Katara attempted to slow their speed down by waterbending. She succeeded partially but she simply didn't have enough time to deal with the two ice floes which sandwiched their vessel between them. Instinctively knowing that they would be crushed along with the boat, Sokka quickly grabbed his sister by the waist before jumping both of them out of the boat and unto the ice floe on the right.

---

"Katara, are you all right?"

"... Yes."

"Sure you're not hurt anywhere, are you?"

"... Yes."

"Good, cause mom and dad would kill me if anything happened to you."

An irked Katara leveled a frown at her brother before turning her attention back to what she had been trying to do before Sokka disrupted her attention, which was taking stock of their current situation, which could summarized as stranded on an ice floe somewhere in the South Pole Sea.

"Wonderful," she muttered and fought down the temptation to inform her brother that she hoped their parents were still going to kill him for the mess they were in and instead grumbled, "I take it this means that I have to waterbend us all the way back home."

"Exactly," declared Sokka in an annoyingly cheerful voice. Katara refused to dignify that remark with a reply and instead took a deep breath to calm herself down and in order to prepare herself for a great deal of waterbending. However, just as she began the first maneuver, the waters around their ice floe began to glow with an eerie bright light.

---

"Sokka, I think there's someone inside the berg."

"... You're just seeing things, Katara. No one can survive inside an iceberg, not to mention get inside one in the first place."

"... There is someone in there!"

"... Hey, no! Katara, get back here!"

---

"He looks about your age, Sokka. ... Looks like he's an airbender."

"Airbenders wear gray robes, not brown ones."

"He has Airbender tattoos."

"Oh please, we can get fake airbender tattoos practically anywhere. You know how everyone wants to look like an Airbender nowadays."

"Shh, quiet. He's waking up."

---

The airbender's immediate reaction upon seeing the two water tribe siblings watching over him was to yell. Katara blinked and Sokka also yelled, both as alarmed as the recently awakened teen who quickly scrambled back on his hands away from them. As he disappeared back over into the iceberg, Katara, recovering from surprise, shouted, "Wait! Come back! Don't be frightened! We won't hurt you!"

"Speak for yourself," retorted Sokka, brandishing his treasured boomerang which their father had gifted to him on his fourteenth birthday, "he must have scared me out of a year's growth."

"Sokka, it's obvious that he's more scared of us than we are of him," said Katara loudly, hoping that the airbender would hear her words and calm down.

"Well, I don't care. We should get out of here."

"Not until we make sure he's really okay."

"Katara, it's none of our business why he's here and what he's doing here. Stop being so nosy and waterbend us back home."

Before Katara could reply to her insensitive brother that he could just go ahead and waterbend himself back home, a thunderous moan rolled out from within the shattered iceberg and over them, galvanizing Sokka into action. Quickly, with both boomerang and scrimshaw out, he positioned himself protectively in front of his sister.

"Katara, get back to the ice floe."

"... Sokka-"

"Now, Katara!"

Without another syllable of protest, Katara nimbly made her way across shattered pieces of floating ice while Sokka warily eyed the broken iceberg which the airbender had been frozen in. In the back of his mind, he cursed himself for not stopping Katara from shattering the frozen prison and freeing whoever that was.

---

There wasn't anything Aang could have done to keep Appa from yawning. He even felt like yawning himself, but he fought down the urge, whispered another command to Appa to make not another sound before peering over the broken side of the iceberg. He relaxed slightly when he saw that the two other teenagers were gone. Behind him, Appa made another low moan. This time not as loud and this time Aang didn't reprimand his animal guide for it seemed as though Appa's loud yawn had scared the strangers away.

"Thanks, Appa," whispered Aang, gratefully rubbing the bison's nose and unintentionally causing it to sneeze with its master barely able to dodge out of the green goo's way. Aang frowned at the close call but didn't bother to scold Appa; it wasn't his fault after all. With a soft sigh, Aang climbed up unto the bison's head and grabbed the reins. A yip yip however failed to launch Appa into the air as it should and the bison only landed with a tremendous splash onto the water's surface.

"Still tired, huh, Appa? Don't blame you," said Aang in a weary tone. He tried not to dwell on the fact that his old teacher Monk Gyatso was no longer with him and instead wondered where he could now go where he would be safe from those hunting the Avatar.

---

Irritated with Sokka, Katara found it very difficult to concentrate on waterbending.

"Can't you waterbend faster?"

Something inside Katara snapped.

"Hey, why are you stopping?"

"Sokka, you idiot! We shouldn't have just left him!"

"... Are we back to this subject again? Katara, he's a stranger. Not a good idea to help strangers. Besides, you heard that awful noise-"

"I don't think he made it."

"Right... than who made it?"

"Airbenders have flying bison, and we've heard them make loud noises just like that plenty of times."

"... Look, we've been through this already. He isn't an airbender; he doesn't have the right outfit. ... Hey, hey, don't you waterbend us back there."

"Sokka, all my gut feelings say we should help him."

"And what about my gut feelings?"

"They don't count. I'm the one doing all the waterbending.

Sokka sighed, "We don't even know if he really needs help, and how are you going to help him anyway?"

"I don't know. I don't know. But I really feel that we should help him."

"... Fine, we'll help him a bit BUT only if he's still back there where we found him. If he's gone, no way am I going to help you search all over the South Pole for your boyfriend."

"It's a deal, and he's not my boyfriend!"

---

Though at his wit's end on what to do next, Aang refused to allow himself to fall further into despair and decided to let Appa get some real rest rather than traveling aimlessly around in freezing waters. With a goal in mind, which was to find shelter and nourishment for his animal guide, Aang picked what he felt to be a suitable iceberg for a temporary home.

While in hiding with Monk Gyatso, Aang had learned maneuvers from the other three bending arts with the use of bending scrolls which Gyatso had procured and prepared for him in advance. Indeed, his old teacher and guardian had long been expecting that he would one day had to flee with his pupil from the Southern Air Temple and had been storing provisions on several small deserted islands for him and Aang.

Remembering how Gyatso had sacrifice himself to distract the bounty hunters' attention away from his student, tears again began to blur Aang's vision and he had to pause in his firebending a deep cave into the iceberg in order to wipe his eyes dry. Sensitive to his master's emotional state, Appa nudged reassuringly against Aang's back and didn't move a muscle when his young master finally gave in into grief and turned around to cry silently into the bison's white fur.

Not too long after, Aang and Appa's shared sorrow was interrupted by what sounded like an argument.

---

"Great, just great. Now, we're lost."

"Sokka, shut up. It's not as if you knew where to go either."

"You've seen one iceberg, you've seen them all. You really should learn to listen to your big brother who knows best."

"If I hadn't wanted to hear what you had to say about my betrothal to Zuko, I wouldn't be out here lost with you in the first place."

"Yeah, have to agree with that. And... I would still have my boat and be fishing right now."

"Don't you dare blame me for what had happened to your boat!"

---

Quicky and as quietly as he could, Aang firebended a tunnel upwards through the berg until he reached a suitable enough height before making an opening out the side of the iceberg by which the water tribe siblings were floating by on an ice floe. From his vantage point, he peered down to the argumentative brother and sister, whose names he couldn't help but learn to be Sokka and Katara.

"Calm down, Katara-"

"Don't tell me to calm down!"

"Katara, we're right beside a berg. You know how your waterbending acts all weird -and- dangerous when you're upset."

"If you don't want me to be upset, stop annoying me!"

"Okay, okay. I won't say another thing. Here's me going mum right now. ..."

"... You're still annoying me."

Sokka rolled his eyes skyward and broke his short silence. "What do you want me to do? Get on another ice floe."

"I would appreciate that very much."

"Hey... I agreed to us going back here to look for your boyfriend-"

"He's not my boyfriend!"

"At least admit that us being lost right now is mostly your fault."

"...I know that... but you don't have to rub it in."

"You know, Katara, if you weren't so sensitive about making mistakes, I wouldn't be so tempted to rub them in your face."

"... Are you saying it's -my- fault that you like to rub my mistakes in my face?"

"Let's see... how can I put this delicately...Yes, Katara, it's -your- fault."

As Katara's jaw dropped in sheer outrage, Aang heard a sudden cracking noise from above. Startled, he looked up just in time to see a boulder-sized piece of the iceberg fall down towards the ice floe.

---

"... Sokka, did you see that?"

"I did... and no way could that chunk of ice had fallen over there if it came from up there. It should had fallen right on top of us."

"... It must be him - that airbender. He must had airbended it away from us."

"... Oh Spirits... that means we owe him for saving our lives... how embarrassing."

---

From inside the now closed off and darkened tunnel, Aang could hear Katara calling for him to show himself.

"Please come out! We don't mean you any harm!"

Sokka joined in listlessly. "Yeah, yeah, you don't have to hide from us. I swear my sister doesn't bite-"

"Sokka!"

"Well, do you bite or don't you?"

Katara gave him a baleful stare before deciding on another tactic to lure the airbender out of hiding.

"Please don't leave us alone out here! We're lost, we need help!"

"No thanks to you know who."

"... Sokka, if you're not going to be part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

With a grimace, Sokka sighed and tried bribery. "Perhaps you don't know, airbender, but we are members of the Southern Water Tribe Royal Family. You'll get a -very- big reward for saving our lives despite putting us in danger in the first place-"

"Sokka..."

"But you can only collect if you help us get back home. You need us to prove you saved us. By the way, I'm his Excellency, Prince Sokka, and believe it or not - this homely-looking girl with me is- Ow!"

"Darn it, Sokka! Quit annoying me!"

---

End Chapter Two


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: The Avatar Returns

The Southern Water Tribe prince and princess insisted in rewarding Aang despite his clear reluctance to help them. He had ordered Appa to land at what he felt was a safe distance from the city and had quite irritated Prince Sokka, who wanted to be dropped off straight-away at the palace.

"Do you actually expect us to walk all the way from here-"

"Sokka," his sister shushed him and with some concern pointed out how cautious, even fearful the airbender seemed. He kept looking about, glancing up at the sky above and towards the horizon all around with a weary sort of alarmed alert as though he expected something terrible to appear.

Sokka's frown deepened and Katara almost punched him when he loudly observed, "Is someone after you or something like that?"

Aang, whose name they didn't even know for he refused to tell them, immediately reacted badly to Sokka's question. Before the prince could even raise his hands to defend himself, Aang airbended a gush of wind which knocked the other teenage boy out of Appa's litter to land on his backside on the hard cold icy ground.

With a panicked light in his gray eyes, the airbender asked Katara to get off his bison. His eyes widened, becoming even more alarmed when she refused to and insisted once again that she and her brother wanted to help him.

"Katara, never mind about helping him!" declared Sokka furiously, almost slipping back down just as he had just pushed himself up to stand. "He's made it clear he doesn't want our help!" Katara ignored him.

"Please. Let us help you. If someone is really chasing after you, we can offer you sanctuary in our tribe." Much to both royals' shock, tears welled in the airbender's eyes at her words.

"Sanctuary?" he repeated, his voice strained to the breaking point with hope and his glazed eyes seemingly unable to leave Katara's face. Quickly, she nodded and promised they would protect him. Even Sokka seconded her words when he finally realized just how fearful for his life the airbender was.

They had to wait until it was dark for the airbender, he had given his name as Pippin, refused to have his bison, whose name was Opsi, move closer to the city while it was still light out. Much to Sokka's annoyance, they had to sneak into the city and into the palace grounds under the cover of darkness to find room for Opsi at the Royal Stables which also housed other flying bison belonging to the Air Nomads who served the Southern Water Tribe Royal Family.

Katara barely was able to keep Pippin from running away with Opsi when he spotted the other bison.

"We won't let anyone know you are here," declared Katara in a strong reassuring tone while holding on tightly to the airbender's right arm with both her hands.

"... And just how are we supposed to explain about Opsi?" complained Sokka, turning nonplussed when Katara told him that they would just say they had found the bison floating around aimlessly in the South Pole Sea with no rider.

"That does happen occasionally, you know."

At this, Sokka nodded slowly and Aang (Pippin) with a confused expression hesitantly asked Katara, "What do you mean that... it happens regularly that bison are found riderless?"

While Sokka stared at Pippin with much suspicion, Katara, though surprised as well by his question, calmly answered, "Well, most Air Nomads are mercenaries... and sometimes get knocked off their bison or get killed while doing their... preferred line of work."

Aang blinked at her explanation while Sokka grumbled at him, "You just -can't- get any weirder. You're an airbender. How could you possibly not know that?"

"Same as how you didn't immediately think of the most obvious excuse we could give for finding Opsi," Katara answered her brother, in lieu of Pippin, who had turned his attention to the other flying bison in the stables.

"Pippin is just tired and isn't thinking very well right now," she said.

"Katara, I know... that I agreed that we help him, but we don't even know how he and Opsi got frozen in that berg in the first place, because he won't tell us."

"He will tell us when he's ready to tell us so just stop bothering him, Sokka. By the way, he has to stay in your room-"

"WHAT?"

"- or in my room."

Sokka's eyes bulged out at the very idea. "... Let's just put him in his own room!"

"The servants would know about Pippin if we get him his own room."

Aang, known to them as Pippin, tried to put in a word. "It's okay. I can just stay with Ap- Opsi here at the stables," but Katara pretended not to hear him and just continued a staring contest with her older brother until finally very reluctantly with a lot of muttering and complaining, Sokka agreed to let the airbender stay in his room.

"But just for tonight. Tomorrow, we get him his own place somewhere in the city."

"Agreed, Sokka," Katara immediately replied with a beaming smile and annoyed Sokka further by saying, "I'm so glad I have such an understanding big brother."

His eyes narrowing at her jibe, Sokka retorted, "Can't believe that I now have to babysit your boyfriends."

But that taunt no longer worked on his sister, whose satisfied smile widened into a mischievous grin as she turned away from a very bothered Sokka to grab the surprised airbender's right hand, tugging Aang to follow her towards the palace.

Aang slept very badly that first night as did Sokka, who just wasn't keen on the idea of letting another boy sleep in his room, even though Aang was sleeping on the couch and certainly not in Sokka's bed. Much to the prince's increased dismay and irritation, just as he had finally fallen asleep, he was suddenly and violently shaken awake by none other than his sister who at the same time was yelling about him losing someone called Pippin.

"What? What?"

"Sokka, you idiot! He's gone!"

"... Who's gone?"

Giving her brother a very irritated look, Katara suddenly grabbed Sokka's arm and dragged him bodily out of bed.

"Ow!" Sokka had landed painfully on the floor on his tailbone.

"Pippin's gone!"

However, Aang hadn't gone away. He was still in the palace, in the Royal Library specifically. Unable to sleep though desperately weary, he had decided to focus his attention in understanding why Katara and Sokka thought that his people, the Air Nomads, were mercenaries when they certainly weren't.

Not even an hour past midnight, while pouring over scrolls in the dim flickering light of a lamp he had borrowed from Prince Sokka's room, Aang made the unbelievable discovery that somehow, impossible though it may seem, a hundred years had passed since that fateful night when his teacher Monk Gyatso died in his arms.

_A hundred years..._ Sheer disbelief coursed through every fiber of Aang's being and he found himself, almost in a panic, rechecking the scrolls he had just perused and confirming that what he had thought he had read was what really had been written. Still, it would be some time before he could even slightly accept the fact that he and Appa had been frozen and asleep in an iceberg for a century.

Gentle hope all of a sudden and once again slightly lifted the shroud of pain, misery, guilt and even anger that Aang had to bear since that day he and Gyatso had to flee from the Southern Air Temple and when his old teacher finally had revealed to his young pupil the terrible unfair burden he had had to bear as the Avatar.

_I am very sorry, Aang. I did all that I could possible to conceal your identity. But we have no choice now... now that they intend to incarcerate every Air Nomad child around your age in order to locate the Avatar._

_... My friends-_

_They will be all right, Aang. I have left a letter for the other monks to find, informing them that you are indeed the Avatar so that the other children should be left alone. ... They will now only hunt us._

_... Where will we go now, Monk Gyatso? To the other nations?_

_No, Aang. We cannot. There are far too many in the Earth Kingdom who will hunt you down, and the Fire Nation will be the same and perhaps even worse. Even the Water Tribes will be pressured to capture you should you visit either poles. We've no choice but to go into hiding. However, don't worry too much. I have already thought about where we'll be hiding well ahead of this day. I have been looking forward to retiring on a certain very pleasant tropical island northwest of here._

Recalling how his dear departed teacher and guardian would maintain a cheerful disposition even though the situation was very dire, a small fond smile of remembrance came over Aang's face as he quickly looked through scrolls for recent information about the Avatar. Hope only bloomed stronger within Aang when the only Avatar-related information he could locate was a legend about a mystical bender known as the Avatar who was said able to master all four elemental bending arts.

_... No one knows about me in this time..._ The thought was like the most wonderful panacea for Aang, who after years of evading capture and imprisonment finally felt that he had a real chance to be truly free and happy once again.

---  
End Chapter Three


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